I'll admit that I'm not familar with Windows kernel architecture, but having a lodable module that supported the 3c509 that's not loaded when it's not needed would hardly be bloat.

Well, I think we're talking two definitions of bloat. Yours is: useless software running in memory. His, I think was: Too much disk space occupied by useless files.

Me, I consider *both* to be bloat, but the real story on the 3c509 under XP is worse than that. If I recall correctly, here's what happened: XP does in fact include a driver that works with the 3c509 on the hard disk. They just disable ISA plug-n-play cards in the .INF file because they're being snarky about trying to kill off ISA cards. So you have the driver, you just can't install the driver. Steal an .INF file from Windows 2000, and you're good to go.

At least that's my recollection. It could have been more complicated than that, I don't remember exactly now.